• Michael Mullins
  • Michael "The Bard" Mullin
  • "The Bard of Foremass"
    • Poem Banner
    Poems
    Optional

    I am a caged bird but
    The door’s flung wide
    I could fly out
    Yet I stay inside.
    A wall I’d scale
    I’d climb a gate
    To get out of jail
    For jails I hate.

    I’m my own boss
    And I do work hard
    Oft at a loss
    Or a poor reward
    For myself I work
    Though free to rest
    No thought to shirk
    Disturbs my breast

    In a cage am I
    But the door’s ajar
    And that is why
    I don’t fly far
    Were the door not so
    I’d long to roam
    But I’m free to go
    So I stay at home.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘The Bard of Foremass’,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.
    Sent 17.12.47

    The old and new

    With thinning ranks and footsteps slow
    Up Age’s bare bleak hill we go
    Death is the enemy of life
    We are the soldiers in the strife.

    Times dread artillery takes its count
    As slowly painfully we mount
    It happens oft that old age ends
    Its days at last among new friends.

    O’ tis a picture sweet to see
    A young child on an old man’s knee
    One fresh from God unstained, unmarred
    The other spent and battle scarred.

    The worn old man whose locks snow white
    Forecast the coming on of night
    The baby curls, the cherub charms
    The new moon in the old moon’s arms.

    Soft baby cheeks to grandad prest
    Soft hands in toil worn hands caressed
    Age holding childhood by the hand
    How beautiful, sadly grand!

    December’s snow, the flowers of May
    The Sunset and the Dawn of day
    The innocent, the reconciled
    The old man and the little child.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘The Bard of Foremass’,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

    Sent 12th April 48
    Won one guinea in Independent
    (Baby & Granda)

    Thoughts by an old ruin

    Stones, corner stones, this old home’s bones
    All else has gone to rot.
    We too are dust, must turn to dust
    Like it or like it not.

    These trees grow on, the house has gone
    Twas older than old men.
    But older still yon nearby hill
    And this vale and this glen.

    Thrones have their day, they pass away
    And mighty empires fall
    Capitals flourish, capitals perish
    The same fate waits them all.

    The moon may cease to mirror light
    The sun grow dark on high
    And countless stars that shine at night
    Grow dim, or fall, or die.

    Yet deathless souls shall never die
    Though souls from bodies sever
    And God who made the earth and sky
    That God shall reign for ever.

    As rolls this changing world along
    On it’s appointed course
    Lets hope and pray each change may be
    For better not for worse.

    MICHAEL MULLIN, ‘The Bard of Foremass’,
    Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.

    Footnote by P.D. – dated 7th October 1971 – in his 86th year.  He would probably have known the people who lived there.  In a letter his grandson Patrick said he remembered him writing this poem. It was Patricks wish that this web site be set up.